Hank Scorpio

The USPS keeps leaving me notes telling me to clear the snow from in front of my mailbox. But I'm one of the only ones in my neighborhood who shoveled enough that the mail truck can actually pull up to my mailbox. And I know he is, because I can see remnants of tire tracks in the slush every day. Maybe I'll shovel snow back in front of the mailbox to see if that makes them happy.

This is exactly what I'm doing today. I was able to get up and down my driveway yesterday without shoveling, so now I'm working on clearing a one car width path in case I need to get back out again. What's working best so far is to use a regular shovel to punch through and break up the glacier. Then I'm using a snow shovel to move bunches of it out of the way. Slow going, but it works.

You know it was a good storm when they bust out the front end loader for snow/sleet clearing work.

Really interesting thing to me about driving in this stuff is how much of a difference ground clearance seemed to make. My vehicle has AWD but only has 6 inches of ground clearance. On the plowed but still snow/sleet covered and compacted surfaces I had zero issues. But on my unplowed street, I just could not get any traction with the snow and sleet keeping the vehicle from settling down to street level. Sitting on top of the sleet, my wheels basically just spun. Just to get off my unplowed street I had to drive in reverse, which probably only worked because the rear has a bit more clearance than the front and that allowed for a little momentum. Felt a lot like driving on sand though.

Made it home from the hospital! I was hoping we'd get out of there while it was still snowing, but by the time we got all the paperwork done and the baby in the car, it'd been sleeting for quite a while. Thankfully roads were fine, just snow and sleet packed. Hardest part of the drive was getting up our unshoveled driveway. Speaking of, I'm not too excited about going out to shovel that. Might just wait until tomorrow to get working on it and just relax the rest of today.

We've got first flakes where I am in Loudoun right now, just a few miles SE of Leesburg. It's light, but fun to know that every single flake is sticking

Whoa nice! I have the same oven but never use it in the cold. Does it hold heat pretty well at lower temperatures?

Doctor DiGiornio in the house! Are you even a pizza connoisseur if you don't doctor up your frozen pizzas?

Wow, 70 pounds, that's incredible! Keep it up man, I bet you'll knock those next 20 off this year and you can make your pizza dreams come true. And I seriously ordered a supreme for dinner tonight from a local pizza place instead of trying to down any hospital food haha.

Awesome. If you don't already have one, a baking steel (or knockoff version from Amazon) is a great way to get even better results. There's a fun recipe for cacio e pepe pizza that uses an ice cube on top of the dough. Maybe I'll have to do a version using freshly fallen sleet haha

I do homemade pizza every Thursday night. If you make it all the time, I'm sure you got this. If it's a new endeavor for you, my biggest tips are to treat the dough as gently as you can. If it's not stretching into shape easily, walk away and let it rest for 5-10 minutes and it'll be way easier to work with. And bake it hot! Hotter the better.

Thank you for the well wishes everyone! I'll be keeping a close eye on the thumpiness of the thump. And at least I'll have good reason to be up at 4am when it's piling up quick. Also pretty sure my two older boys at home are more hyped about the storm than about meeting their new brother haha. @WmsptWx that is quite the story! Guessing that was the best driving you've done in your entire life.

Our little baby boy was born last night! Now I gotta figure out how we get home. They're talking about a 10am discharge time tomorrow, depending on what the storm does. But it also sounds like they have some apprehension about sending a new baby into the middle of a snowstorm, so it may just mean an extra day at the hospital for us. Anyone love driving in the snow feel like breaking us outta here tomorrow?

Here's the frontal passage as recorded on my tempest. Dropping quick!

I went and grabbed some staple items from the store this evening. It wasn't that crowded, but you can tell people have already started to raid the shelves. Snack aisles definitely hit the hardest, so get your cheezits while you still can. I was also trying to buy for family that'll be coming to take care of our two kids while the 3rd makes his arrival. Kinda hard to shop for a snowstorm and for random family cooking. Hopefully my kids don't get tired of Mac n cheese, ground beef, and cereal

That neighborhood must have had the most robust obs reports in the region. Easiest way to spot fellow weather weenies in the neighborhood is to find the good weather stations, I've found.

Never knew I was the closest in proximity to @Ji out of anyone on the board...neat.

This accumulation distribution matches the January 22/23 1940 storm pretty closely. Richmond received 21" and DC got 15". I believe that is still the biggest storm on record for Richmond. No idea if any part of the pattern or storm evolution is also a match, but there is at least historical precedence for accumulations like this.

Add snowshoes to our hospital bag... Got it! A few days after the snow stopped in the January 96 storm, they did send a humvee down our street to pick up my neighbor. She was a nurse at the local hospital and I guess it was way past time for shift change.

I mentioned in a different thread last week that my wife and I are on baby watch. We're still on baby watch, and now I have a bunch of logistical questions about snow I hadn't previously considered. For example, what if everything goes great for us and for snow lovers, the hospital discharges us, but our streets aren't plowed?

Really does feel like cold wind is our weather most days in the winter, spring, and fall. I at least finally figured out how to keep my very heavy deck furniture from going sliding across the deck. Bummer about the bronchitis. Is that something that just needs time to resolve? We have the flu in my house and as you might guess, it's quite unpleasant. Sooooo fatigued.

Thank you, and congrats to you as well! I hope your wife and your son (and you!) are doing well and starting to settle into a routine now. It was slippery out that day and the next morning. Always interesting to see which roads get attention and which don't.

I can almost guarantee we jackpot, simply because my wife and I are on baby watch and that's how these things go. A blizzard baby would make for cool memories, even if it did create some logistical issues for us haha

28/23 I'm supposed to be driving down to Richmond early tomorrow morning for work. Gonna see how things look at 6 and then perhaps issue a two hour delay for myself.

Vivid lightning and loud thunder with that cell that just moved through Loudoun. Sounded like a good old summertime thunderstorm